Category Archive

Last week, four Card Kingdom employees ventured into the unknown and played a truly unforgettable game of Commander. Un-Commander, that is! Representing four of Unstable‘s five factions, our players sleeved up some silver-bordered cards and battled it out to see which of Bablovia’s leaders would reign supreme. Crossbreed Labs Aaron, the CK Blog’s resident Commander expert, brought Dr. Julius …

Dreaming of commanders that aren’t legal is a thought experiment as old as the format itself. We’ve speculated about “shoulda-been-legends” like Preacher or Uncle Istvan, and many of us tried out four-color decks in the pre-Commander 2016 world with the Guildpact Nephilim. The release of Unstable will once again beg us to ask what kinds of cards we should allow in …

For all the deckbuilding, winning, or not winning that we do, the biggest reason we should love Commander is not just for the achievements we unlock ourselves, but also for the ability to excite and inspire others. One of the deck archetypes that has inspired me most over the years has been Five-Color One-Drops. Five (completely coincidental number) years ago, …

When Infect was re-introduced in Scars of Mirrodin, I built a very flavorful, very unsuccessful Glissa, the Traitor Infect deck. Aside from the general inexperience I had as a Commander deckbuilder, I grew frustrated because the deck seemed to have a card power limitation. It was like having a word on the tip of my tongue; the deck needed one …

The best quality you can have in any community is inspiration. The ability to inspire others is infectious, challenging your community to create for the sake of excitement and bettering what we can accomplish. In Commander, I’ve found inspiration is the best quality amongst the playgroups I’ve seen or participated in. Developing a close-knit group that encourages you to bring …

As I mentioned in last week’s article, Ixalan has done a lot to change the way Magic players approach creature tribes. This week, we’re going to explore not only the power of our new Pirates, but the possibilities of combining them with additional tribal support as we look at the emergence of an up-and-coming Commander archetype, “Creature Type Matters.” WHY …

Somewhere in Ixalan’s never-ending, Neverland-esque Pirate-Dinosaur skirmish, our imagination, childhood, and hearts were smitten with the possibilities of some of the most refreshing designs to date. And boy, they didn’t disappoint! While most have been taken with the overabundance of new creature types, the biggest win for me is a long-standing theory I’ve held about creatures and the color pie: …

Some say we should save the best for last. I don’t know if we’ve done that, but I can definitely say, without a doubt, that we’ve saved the strangest. With Inalla and Mairsill keeping most brewers busy, our last installment of Let’s Brew for Commander 2017 has taken a dip away from the new-hotness holding everyone’s attention to do something …

Welcome back to Let’s Brew: a weekly deckbuilding mini-series exploring legendary creatures from Commander 2017. We’ve already given Nazahn some toys to play with and assembled a legion of Licia’s soldiers, and today, we’re going to build a home for one of C17’s most colorful legends: O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami. WHY O-KAGACHI? Any one reason will do, but we have a …

Of the many places we begin when we build decks, one of my favorites is inspiring artwork. As a writer and storyteller, the ability to understand, appreciate, and communicate what is compelling has become very important to me, and its influence is paramount in most of my favorite deck designs. As Magic has grown in popularity, we have become increasingly …